What Are the Different Types of Medical Software and How Can They Help Your Medical Practice?

There are plenty of software solutions on the market today offering services to solve some of the more traditionally complex tasks inherent to a medical office. For a medical practice, it can be a little overwhelming to sort through all the platforms and their features, from medical billing software to medical scheduling software, practice management software to medical information systems.

What you may find as you explore the various medical software brands is that there is a lot of overlap, with some services offering a little of this and that. To help give you an overview of some of the medical software options available, we put together this quick roundup.

EMRThere’s often confusion between EMV vs. EHR, so here’s the difference. An EMR (Electronic Medical Record) is all the internal information a practice collects on a given patient. This data is built up over various visits to a doctor. As such, EMRs are not usually shared outside the walls of a medical practice, but are kept on-hand internally to help treat and track the patient’s various diagnoses and progress. EMR software makes it easier for doctors and staff to keep, store, organize, and access this information whenever needed.

EHROn the flipside, EHR (Electronic Health Record) is very similar to EMR, except they’re meant to be more comprehensive with medical history and shared amongst various practices for the benefit of both doctors and patients. EHR software has been around for a while, but government incentives to go digital have made its use a lot more prevalent. Really solid EHR software will allow your practice to save and access an incredible amount of aggregated patient data with just a few clicks.

Practice Management SoftwareEvery medical practice needs some degree of organization to be successful. Practice management software can help your business take control of its day-to-day activities by streamlining operations. Common to this type of software are features such as appointment scheduling, patient registration, insurance filing, specialized calendars and billing.

Medical Scheduling SoftwareFew things can be more frustrating for a practice than having a patient schedule an appointment and then not show up. It’s an incredibly frequent occurrence that costs the U.S. healthcare system up to $150 billion annually in lost revenue. Medical scheduling software can help with this problem by sending automatic alerts and notifications to patients to remind them of appointments, which has been shown to reduce no-shows. It’s worth noting that there are lots of different types of medical scheduling software available, even some free versions, and you may also find this type of functionality already included with certain EMR/EHR and practice management services.

Medical Billing SoftwareEvery medical practice needs to keep its lights on, and medical billing software certainly makes it a lot easier for your staff to do just that. Good medical billing software allows you to manage insurance and patient payments, and track their status through the submissions process. It’ll also keep you updated on evolving payer rules, and changes to codes and formats. Collecting your revenue for services rendered shouldn’t be a headache, and medical billing software will take the sting out of it.

These are just a few of examples of the various types of medical software available to practices that can help make their professional lives a little easier.

When the transition to ICD-10 begins Oct. 1, 2015, healthcare providers will have an additional 135,000 codes for documenting a patient's medical status and reason for a doctor's visit. Based on the additions of these codes CMS predicts that claim error rates will be more than two times higher with ICD-10, reaching a high of 6 percent to 10 percent in comparison to the current 3 percent average using ICD-9 codes. They are also predicting that denial rates will rise by 100 percent to 200 percent and days in accounts receivable will grow by 20 percent to 40 percent.

Now is the ideal time to prepare. Start by:

1. Identifying current high dollar or volume procedures as these will have the most impact to your business;

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